Guide
My Everyday Clean Beauty Makeup Routine
I'm 44, and I spent almost 20 years in cosmetics before switching to low-tox. This is the light, skin-like makeup I actually reach for every day — built in order, with my honest picks and the few conventional exceptions I keep.
Last updated: June 2026
Prep the canvas
Makeup sits better on prepped skin. Before anything else, I do my oxygen skin therapy — it's the one step I've used every single day for a year. Saturate the single-use sponge, then massage it into your skin to flood the pores; the sponge gently exfoliates while the oxygen nanobubbles work. I finish on my lips, then follow with lip balm so it absorbs better. I also reach for it after dermarolling to keep my skin calm while it heals.
Oxygen nanobubble skin prep
AO2 Clear is my daily skin-prep hero — it leaves my skin feeling genuinely clean before makeup goes on. The deeper pore and turnover claims are my own experience, not medical advice.
Moisturize, then serum
Once my skin is prepped it drinks product in, so I keep this simple. In the morning it's a clean moisturizer and my serum — that's it. At night I swap in a Tata Harper oil and add eye cream.
AM moisturizer — Crunchi Daylight
Two pumps of Crunchi Daylight (honestly, one is plenty once your skin is prepped), worked into the face and onto the lips. Tata Harper is my PM oil — unaffiliated, just what I personally use.
Serum — Adapt Sapphire
My own Hempsolv Adapt Sapphire Serum — frankincense, blue tansy, CBD, and CBG. I use it for natural redness and it makes my skin look so plump. Eye cream only at night.
Correct before you cover
This is the step that does the quiet heavy lifting. I run a correction stick along the sides of my face, around my nose, on my lip line, and on my inner eyelid, then blend it out with my fingers. It melts in, does all the corrective work, and never looks like makeup when it's done.
Jones Road The Neutralizer Pencil — Light Peach
My favorite newer product — I've reached for it daily for months. Light Peach neutralizes the spots where I'd normally want concealer, without the weight.
A wash of tint, not full coverage
I don't cover my whole face — I want my skin to still look like skin. A little tinted moisturizer on the areas that need evening out, applied with my hands or a brush, is all I use. One honest note: this one has no SPF, and that's on purpose for me — SPF in makeup breaks me out, so I skip it here. That means this is not sun protection; if you want SPF, layer it the way that works for your skin.
Jones Road Just Enough Tinted Moisturizer — Medium
Sheer, skin-like, and exactly enough. Shade Medium for me. No SPF — a deliberate choice for my skin, not a claim that you should skip sun protection.
Warmth where the sun would hit
I bronze where I'd naturally catch sun — across the hairline on both sides, the cheekbones, the jaw, and down the nose. I rarely wear eyeshadow, so I also use the same bronzer with a skinny brush to lightly sculpt my nose. The brush is an old Morphe one I grabbed at TJ Maxx — nothing special, and not an affiliate, just what's in my bag.
Jones Road The Bronzer — Golden Tan
Golden Tan reads warm, not muddy. One bronzer doing double duty as my sculpt shade keeps the whole routine fast.
A little dew
For glow I use a hydrating luminizer as a highlighter and a touch on the eyes, swept on with a fluffy brush. The one I reach for is RMS ReDimension Hydra Dew Luminizer in Prosecco Fizz — my clean-beauty collection is the only place I can consistently find it in stock.
Shop the glow
RMS ReDimension Hydra Dew Luminizer in Prosecco Fizz lives in my clean-beauty collection — the most reliable place to grab it when it's in stock.
Eyeshadow as eyeliner
I don't use a liquid liner. I take a dark brown eyeshadow, add a drop of my skin-prep solution to the re-wet sponge, and work it into a paste. Then I line from the corner and pull outward — it's so much softer than a liquid liner, and I add a tiny wing at the very end.
Jones Road The Best Eyeshadow — Dark Brown
Used wet, Dark Brown becomes the softest everyday liner. Dry, it's a quick wash of color on the lid.
Where I keep a few honest exceptions
Lashes are where I keep a couple of conventional picks. A Jane Iredale lash primer (up, then down), let it dry, and a coat of L'Oréal Telescopic — about $11, picked for its brush and a decent score on a toxicity-rating app. None of these are HCL affiliates, so I keep them in my clean-beauty collection rather than pretending they're partners.
Shop my lash picks
Jane Iredale and the rest of my clean-beauty bag live in one collection — shop the lash picks (and everything else) there.
Finish with the lips
I line with a nude pink pencil — the perfect everyday color — and top it with a sheer peptide lip treatment. These sell out the moment they're in stock, so grab whatever shade you can find.
Jones Road The Lip Pencil — Nude Pink
Nude Pink is my everyday lip. I layer Lip Recharge in Rosé over it — so sheer, so good, and it disappears off the shelves.
The 5-minute version
On a rushed morning I drop everything but two steps: prep the skin, then a wash of tint. That alone reads as "good skin," which is the whole point of this routine. If you only want to try two things, start here.
More clean beauty I love
Beyond the routine above, I keep a running collection of the clean-beauty products I actually use — RMS Beauty, Tata Harper, Jane Iredale, Ilia, ZuZu, and more. The brands I name above that aren't HCL affiliates live here, in one place, so you can shop them without me pretending every one is a partner.
HCL Clean Beauty collection
My curated cross-brand clean-beauty picks in one shoppable collection — the home for the named-only brands in this routine.
What I don't use
Clean beauty isn't about perfection, and I won't pretend it is. A few honest calls from my routine:
Beauty blenders
I skip them. They hold water and product in a damp sponge you reuse for weeks — exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to avoid. Fingers and a clean brush do the job.
A few conventional exceptions
My L'Oréal Telescopic mascara and my old Morphe and Shiseido tools aren't clean-beauty brands. They earn their spot honestly — and I'd rather tell you that than hide them.
See the routine in motion
Reading the steps is one thing — watching how the correction stick melts in or how the eyeshadow-as-liner technique works makes it click. Here are two of my makeup tutorials.
Real glow starts with sleep
Skin-like makeup starts with skin that's actually rested. Light, EMFs, and your nervous system decide whether your body repairs overnight — build a bedroom that lets you heal in the dark, and the glow takes care of itself.
Sleep & Nervous System →Join the Healing Community
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